Paradox (FBI Thriller 22)

Savich was fast, Victor, made that turn faster than Mama threw a hammer at the mailman for ogling her. If they’d been in our lame-butt car and we’d had the Porsche, I’d have got both of ’em. They’d be dead meat.

Victor groaned. “Fact is we were lucky, Lissy. If that old man hadn’t chased his mutt across the road in front of him, Savich wouldn’t have swerved and hit that fire hydrant. They’d have got us, Lissy, you know it. Why not admit it? We barely got out of there.” Victor laid his palm over his heart. “I still feel like I want to throw up. That was way too close. I hope we’re safe now, but if anyone saw us drive in here, they could tell everyone.”

Screw any loser who saw us. Doesn’t matter. We’re safe. I got us out of there fast, and you know something? It really was fun, got my blood pumping, made me forget those staples in my stomach.

Victor frowned into the small fire pit. The fire wasn’t hot enough yet to heat up the beef enchiladas he’d bought ready-made at a market in Lewiston that morning. On the other hand, he wasn’t really hungry, not after Sherlock had nearly shot his head off, so close he almost puked up the fried lobsters. His heart began pounding a mad tattoo again, and he rubbed his hand over his chest, hoping to slow it.

Got some heartburn, do you? That’s what you get, gorging yourself on all those lobsters. They weren’t bad, never had fried lobster before. And they didn’t make me queasy, not like you.

“Shut up, Lissy.”

Hey, you’re still shaking. You are such a wuss, Victor.

He wanted to slap her—not hard, because he knew those staples still hurt, only a little slap, to get her attention, make her realize she owed everything to him. Instead, Victor poked the burning twigs with a stick, stirred the embers, and tucked in some more balled-up newspaper. Sparks flew, the paper caught fire, and then the twigs, and warmth spewed out. He set the enchiladas on a bit of tinfoil on the grate. He leaned back on his elbows and sighed. “I really wish you hadn’t taken a chance like that, Lissy. We could be dead or back in Central. I hated all those crazies and those guards, always giving you the stink-eye.”

Wuss, wuss.

He ignored her, breathed in the smell of the enchiladas. “You said I didn’t think enough, went too fast at that book festival with the chocolate bar, but you did the same thing today. No thought at all. You roared ahead, didn’t pay any attention to anything I said. Didn’t think they’d turn on us, did you? You thought they’d try to run, but they didn’t.”

You gotta take your chances when they’re offered up, like Mama said, not cower and hide. But only when there’s a chance of it paying off, Victor, not like that stunt of yours at the book festival. You take chances when it’s smart, and this was smart.

“Would you shut up! I don’t care what your mama said. She’s dead, Lissy, long gone. There’s only you and me now, and yes, we’ve got to be smart. You don’t pick up a gun and start shooting. You know we’ve got to plan, and I’m good at it. No more hotdogging, okay, by either of us.”

Like I said, if we’d had the Porsche and not this pitiful Kia, they’d be dead. And now the Kia has bullet holes all over it.

“I’ll buy another car tomorrow morning. It’s too dangerous now to drive the Kia around.”

You paid five tho

usand dollars for that old Kia, said you didn’t want to steal a car and always have to be looking over your shoulder. Now you’re going to buy another one? Where’d you get the money to buy it? It’s not from Mama’s stash back home, so where’d you get the money?

Victor gently lifted the tinfoil holding the two enchiladas with a fork, careful not to spill the juice, and laid it on a flat rock in front of him. “One for me, one for you, Lissy. Shut up about the money, okay? Why should I tell you where I got it? You never told me where your mama hid the money we took from those banks. Half a million bucks has to be buried at her house somewhere, and you wouldn’t tell me. Why not tell me now?”

She was silent, and then he heard laughter in her voice. You know, I’m thinking those fried lobsters weren’t very healthy, Victor. It’s a good thing we’re young, or we’d keel over of heart attacks. I want to pick where we eat next time.

“Yeah, sure. But you’ll order a bucket of french fries, so crispy they walk right into your mouth. That’s healthy?”

She laughed. Maybe. Victor, we heard on the radio today how Octavia Ryan’s going to be buried in that fancy Catholic cathedral in Falls Church tomorrow morning. It’s going to be a big to-do, lots of big muckety-mucks boohooing for her. My mama always told me you plan really good, then you go for surprise and shock and WHAM—the bugs freeze, can’t think straight, doesn’t matter if they’re big-assed important bugs, they’re terrified, scared out of their buggy wits.

“Lissy, you know I already have a plan, just looking for the right time and place to make a big splash. You know I’m smart. I know how to do stuff, know where to buy stuff to make it happen. First I was thinking the Savich house, I decided taking the little boy was better, it would really make them pay for what they took from me.” He ate a bite of enchilada. It was cold in the middle, but he didn’t care. “This cathedral? Now, I think it’s perfect. Don’t doubt me, Lissy, this time it’s going to be huge.”

She didn’t demand to know what he was planning. She said only Let’s kill us some bugs, then.

32

* * *

FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA

TUESDAY MORNING

There was standing room only for Octavia Ryan’s funeral mass at Our Lord of the Fields. Family and friends were pressed together in the pews or standing against the nave walls. Sala saw Savich, Sherlock, and Mr. Maitland walk in together and take their seats well behind the family. He saw a lot of FBI agents he knew, some he didn’t. And many of the lawyers Octavia had worked with, some he’d worked with, some he’d seen in passing. Octavia’s mother and father walked like cardboard cutouts, deep in shock, two of their grown children flanking them, both grim and pale-faced. Because of an insane young man bent on revenge, a family was shattered.

Sala wondered what his own family would have done if he’d simply disappeared from that rental cottage in Willicott, leaving no clues, no leads. His dad would have eventually moved on. He had his feet firmly on the ground, but Mom—his mom would never have stopped looking. She’d have searched until she died, he knew it to his gut. Sala supposed there’d always be terrorists eager to kill those who didn’t agree with them and there would always be Victor Nessers, just as twisted. Octavia had saved Victor from life imprisonment or the lethal injection, and he’d killed her coldly, without remorse, because she’d called him weak, manipulated by his sixteen-year-old Lolita girlfriend. Sala simply couldn’t get his brain around the madness. He wanted very much to put his hands around Nesser’s neck and wring the life out of him. He felt Ty take his hand, squeeze lightly.

He drew in a deep breath, looked straight ahead at the people in front of him, most wearing black, most sincerely distressed by Octavia’s death. No, get it right—her murder. Her coffin was covered with a blanket of pink hydrangeas, her favorite flower, her sister had said. A large color photo of her taken four months ago was propped against an easel. She was smiling wildly, standing on the courthouse steps, pumping her fist in the air. She looked beautiful, insanely happy, ready to burst out of her skin. Sala remembered that day, the day she succeeded in her prosecution of an embezzler and a murderer, one of Sala’s cases. He’d met her in the course of that case, worked with her, and when it was over, when she’d won, he’d taken her to celebrate with clam spaghetti at Florintine’s in Foggy Bottom.

At that moment a bright shaft of sunlight speared through a beautiful stained-glass window, striking the easel and Octavia’s face. Sala stared at the picture of the woman he’d known very well. They’d been good for each other in their short time together. He’d still been grieving for his late wife, Joy, and Octavia grieving an aunt lost to breast cancer and, of course, the death of her marriage.